The loss of card progression in skirmish play has really lessened my personal interest in playing skirmishes. Which feels a tad strange since it feels like the definitive version is lacking behind the original in this mode.
So I am here to pitch my ultimate wish for the replacement of the original skirmish mode: Skirmish campaign.
A separate mode from the current skirmish mode where you undergo a series of skirmish map battles but with some modifications.
First up: objectives. Each battle has both a primary and bonus objectives.
The primary can span from the obvious of just wiping out all enemy Ai, to holding a position from waves of attacks, to destroying a command center inside a fortress., gathering exp and more.
Clear the primary objectives to win of course.
Bonus objectives grant exp, but also a bonus the next map. Rescue a trapped native and escort them to a native post and next map you might find yourself with a bunch of native warriors to aid you explorer in the early game, or maybe their native warriors will become unlocked from the embassy for the rest of the campaign. Liberate some resource crates from a small outpost to start with a little of each resouce or find and collect a specific treasure for a permanent boost to your explorer/chieftan/hero/whatever for the remainder of the campaign. You know those kind of objectives akin to those in the story campaign.
Doing bonus objectives is basically meant to help you both short and long term.
Next up: Progression. The progression in this mode is completely separate from the levels you earn in normal skirmish.
By completing battles and campaigns you earn conquest points (I don’t have a good name for these points xD) which you use to purchase new cards, talents or rank up your Civs.
Each Civ earns points separately.
Cards are self explanatory, you don’t start out with all the Civs cards and perhaps there is some tweaks to cards in this mode or new cards that is not available in other modes. (Balance is not really a huge issue, since it is a single player mode)
Talents are bonuses that you can equip to your Civ that give them advantages. From mundane things like extra starting population or unit boosts to more interesting ones that unlock units to be trained, like tamed animals or special units not otherwise available (Like rename some of the story campaign units like the bone guard and allow them to be trained), or ensure certain mercenaries is always available for hire. (Make them as diverse as the cards.)
You can only equip a certain number of talents based on your Civ rank and even at max you can only have a fraction of the total talents available to each Civ equipped.
Perhaps talents can even be separated into different grades (like bronze, silver, gold) and the most powerful tier has the least amount of matching slots.
Ranking up a Civ unlocks a new wealth of cards and talents to be purchased and unlocks more slots for talents.
Third: The Campaign. You can chose to undergo a short campaign with few battles or longer ones with more. You can also theme the campaign to America, Asia and Africa.
When you start a campaign you get a choice of maps to pick from, each yielding a special reward for completing it based on what the map is. (Theme the rewards to the maps if possible)
You should also be able to see what the primary objective of the map is.
When you complete a map you move unto a new set of maps and so on, slowly building up more power until the final map which should conclude in some kind of climax.
The more options to create campaigns the better, you want to go from the east to the west coast of America? You go for it.
You wanna do maps with coast as if you were doing a world tour? You get the idea.
Heck…perhaps you can do a custom campaign and just cue the maps you like the most into a playlist.
Long term progression: Maybe once you reach the final rank of any Civ you can reset them for some kind of bonus, like an icon or unit skin or something, I dunno.
Am I aiming far too high? Do you think this might be a good edition to the game? Or you do have any ideas of your own?